ran alot of phenolic last year for race teams. we used 1/4 carbide (garr) 10000 rpm 250 ipm for surface machining and contouring. I got good parts and also good tool life. only problem is this stuff sticks (lol) and turns everything yellow. I also used 1/2 emill same speed and feed worked great also.

thad you are the greatest. have to remember the alt key but glad to see the underlines again X wasnt bad but it just got alot better lol to thad

i have some material to machine this may turn out to be a long term project and right now things are not going good. the company will not tell me everything about this material i am almost sure that it is g10 but i think it also has carbon in the middle of the block. one problem that i am having is i dont have coolant i am going to try a spray mist today on it and see if it helps. i do know that this stuff really stinks. i have tried diamond and carbide with not much tool life. ran spm from 250-500. if anyone has had any luck with this material please let me know thanks again for such a great forum

kunfuzed is see that we think alot on the key strokes. thats me everything on the left side some on right but mostly left. but i can say the more the more i use X i am getting quicker and quicker. i always like to learn new programms and software so this is just another thnig to learn. but its all good.

i seen the key mapping but just not the same. i am getting use to the format just going to take sometime. i still find myself ©(l)(e) and there is no line or ©® and no retangle. but i do like the fact that you have more ways to make boxs larger and circle these are all nice things that they added. hopefully in the next few years or so i will have it down (lol). the only down fall is that i work for a protype model shop and things have to go now or like lately yesterday. so this makes learning just that much more fun.

just starting using X today. so far so good i guess the only problem i have is i am hitting keys on the keyboard and nothing happens. i miss my hot keys. there is alot of new things to learn in x and there are some kewl new toolpaths also cant wait to start using the 5 axis stuff.they have moved alot of things around and that makes it some hard to program but just keep clicking and i find them sooner or later.

i will have to talk with our I.T. guy and find out about upgrading to a duel processor.bogusmill alot of my files are coming from catia and pro e. they come in as a step files. most of the time they look ok but many times they are crap. pro e seems to be the worse. we have been using pro e as a translator for our step files. the job i have now is taking at least 1 hr or alittle longer to process the surfaces.

i will try the gouge check to see if that helps any i have tried repair and replace but it dont help any if anything it makes it worse because of all the little small surfaces and you cant find or see. thank all of you for your help the one good thing about this problem is that i cant do much while i am generateing code lol.

the dell is a 1g ram pen D 2.8 ghz with a ati radeon x300. as far as the tools paths that i am using it does's it in both parallel rough and finish. i am using gouge check and gap setting are set at 300% for roughing.one problem that i think i have is that we cut surface's that have been translated from other cad files and alot of times we get alot of crappy surfaces i dont know if is may have something to do with it or not. i have to leave some file running over night just to be able to post the next day.

i am running a dell dimension 9150 but it is taking forever to process code. most of my files have alot of surfaces any where from 1000 to 6000. i spend hours waiting on them to process. dones anyone know of a way to speed things along. thanks for the help

this is a fixed table machine it is a cms bridge type machine very nice machine. thanks for all the help

who makes good subplates anyone know?

we have been looking at subplates but need one 16' x 6' or 2 8' tables. just not sure which route to take. someone just thought about a old machine table and we was going to check around to see if we could maybe find one.

i was wondering if anyone knows a place or web site that i may be able to find old machine tables. i would like to put a old machine table on our router and not sure where to look and find on. thanks for any help and one could give me on this matter.

doing some testing today with a mitsubishi bxd40000r162sa16s this is a awesome little cutter. .200 deep 12000 rpm 240ipm 1" dia. lets the chips roll. mitsubishi makes some nice insert tooling. also got a good warenty with them